'Cowpooling' saves money by buying beef in bulk

Lori Niedenfuer Cool | The Grand Rapids PressKathy Rafter stores quarter side of beef, lamb and chicken that she buys in bulk from a green livestock farm in her freezer. Rafter "cowpools," or buys the beef from a cow with other people.

Buying steak or hamburger in bulk packages can save you money at the grocery store. So, could buying half a cow from a butcher save you more?

Plenty of folks in Michigan have been doing just that for years, and those looking for one more way to cut expenses, may want to investigate whether it would work for them.

Cash-strapped consumers usually find the cost-per-pound of buying beef in bulk is kinder to their pocketbooks, with an average $3 a pound, plus another 40 and 45 cents a pound to pay a butcher to process, or slaughter, the animal.

"Understand what your family enjoys eating, what you enjoy cooking and then make some good decisions on whether it makes sense to buy it on sale at a retail grocery, look more for wholesale cuts or go buy the animal live at the farmer and divide it with friends and family," says Kathleen Hawkins, executive director of the Michigan Beef Industry Commission.

"Those are all things to think about when deciding to buy in bulk or not."

Keith De Young, proprietor of KDY Butchering in Grandville, said he has kept busy as a self-employed butcher for 34 years largely because of budget-conscious customers who want to know what they're eating.

His customers pay a hanging weight of $1.80 to $2.20, plus a 45-cent-per-pound processing charge.

"They want to know how the cows are treated, how they were fed, the whole ball of wax," he said. "They don't want animals starved to come up with leaner beef. They want to know if it was fed hormones or antibiotics in the feed. That's a big selling item for people who buy in bulk."

When Kathy Rafter decided to chuck her vegetarian ways, she resolved not to sink her teeth into just any piece of meat. The Rockford woman decided eight years ago to purchase a quarter side of beef annually directly from a farmer.

Her husband, Jack, and son, Patrick, love the way it tastes and she said it givers her peace of mind because she knows who is raising her grass-fed meat.

"For me it's important to know where my food is coming from," said Rafter, 49, a natural health practitioner. "I've learned over the years to pay attention to food scares in our culture. If I don't grow the food, I should know the person who does."

Grand Valley State University accounting professor Anne Sergeant keeps a grass-fed whole cow in one of her 22-cubic-foot chest freezers, pork and chicken in the other.

Sergeant doesn't organize her beef in the freezer by specific cuts, so often whatever she pulls out that night is what her family of four children and husband will eat.

She likes being able to look at her plate and know from whom she bought her meat.

"That people connection, knowing who raised your food for you enhances that whole community aspect that you don't think about when you buy meat from a grocery store," Sergeant said.

Holland resident Barb Winkle has another reason for buying her beef straight from farmers who feed grass to their cows.

TIP SHEET

• A good rule of thumb is 1 cubic foot of freezer space is needed for 35 to 40 pounds of meat.

• A side of beef weighs about 250 pounds after butchering.

• If your family can't eat a whole cow in a year -- its freezer shelf life -- many farms will sell quarters of beef.
• It's best to keep beef in a freezer no longer than nine to 12 months. After that, some dehydration and freezer burn may compromise the meat's flavor.

• If you decide not to have the bone removed with some cuts, that may result in odd-shape packages which may require more space.

"In my opinion, it's better flavor, more tender," said Winkle, who for each of the past nine years has purchased a grain-fed quarter beef carcass she stores in her upright freezer. The meat lasts her family of five close to a year.

"I just feel like the meal is better quality if (the cows) are grain-fed."

There's still a steady demand for grain-fed beef because customers consider the meat a little more tender than its grass-fed counterpart and enjoy the taste marbling, or streaks of fat, brings to the table, said Steve Sytsma, vice president of Byron Center Meats.

Plus, price-conscious customers don't necessarily want to buy a half or quarter of a cow, nor do they want to share the costs of buying meat with a friend or relative, Sytsma said.

Nathan Creswick, who raises livestock on a farm in Ravenna and has a customer base as far as Detroit, agrees the state economy has impacted beef sales -- it's about 20 percent less than last year, he said.

"It hasn't fallen off but it's slowed down," he said. "We're offering a deal that if they buy $500 of beef, we give them a 10 percent discount off the total price."

Systma says the economic downturn has created a higher demand to buy beef in 20- to 30-pound bundles, which average $2.29 per pound.

Byron Center Meats started selling those bundles about a year and a half ago.

"They don't have to lay out as much money at one time," Sytsma says, adding Byron Center Meats sells grass-fed beef as well.